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Amazon Courts Fire Phone Developers With $15,000 In “Amazon Coins”

When Microsoft needed to convince developers to build mobile apps for its Windows Phone 8 platform, it took a familiar path: it offered them money to do so. Amazon, however, is going a different route – at least, for now. Instead of outright paying developers to update their apps to work with its newly launched smartphone, the Fire Phone, Amazon is offering up to $15,000 in “Amazon Coins” which developers can give away to their users.

The idea here is that in today’s crowded app marketplace, acquiring new users and keeping current users engaged can be very expensive. According to data from Fiksu, it currently costs app marketers $1.24 to get users to download and install an application on iOS, and $1.31 on Android. Those numbers don’t directly correlate to Amazon’s Appstore, but they give you the general idea of the costs involved in this industry.